1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications in general, and, more particularly, to a wireless telecommunications system.
2. Description of Related Art
FIG. 1 depicts a schematic diagram of a portion of a known wireless telecommunications system, providing wireless telecommunications service to a number of wireless mobile units (e.g., wireless mobile units 101-1 through 101-3) that are situated within a geographic region. The heart of a typical wireless telecommunications system is a wireless switching center (xe2x80x9cWSCxe2x80x9d) 120. Typically, the WSC 120 is connected to a plurality of base stations (e.g., base stations 103-1 through 103-5) that are dispersed throughout the geographic region serviced by the system and to the local and long-distance telephone and data networks (e.g., local-office 130, local-office 138 and toll-office 140). WSC 120 is responsible for, among other things, establishing and maintaining a call between a first wireless mobile unit and a second wireless mobile unit or, alternatively, between a wireless mobile unit and a wireline mobile unit (e.g., wireless mobile unit 150), which is connected to the system via the local and/or long-distance networks.
The geographic region serviced by a wireless telecommunications system is partitioned into a number of spatially distinct areas called xe2x80x9ccells.xe2x80x9d As depicted in FIG. 1, each cell is schematically represented by a hexagon. In practice, however, each cell has an irregular shape that depends on the topography of the terrain surrounding the cell. Typically, each cell contains a base station, which comprises the radios and antennas that the base station uses to communicate with wireless mobile units in that cell and also comprises the transmission equipment that the base station uses to communicate with the WSC 120. However, locating wireless mobile units within a cell was often difficult.
Recently, global positioning systems (GPS) have been developed to the point where they are very inexpensive to implement. Thus, such systems may soon be prevalent in wireless mobile units to determine precise location thereof. In addition, in the area of wireless technology, assisted GPS is being developed to improve on normal GPS for position or location detection in wireless mobile units. Further, other known systems already exists (such as known triangulation methods) for precisely locating wireless mobile units. And still others are constantly being developed. Therefore, a need exists to create other uses for the location or position information of wireless mobile units.
Increasingly complex modern life leaves many people eager for means of simplifying their busy lives. While information is readily accessible to aid in day to day situations, the information is general and not tailored to individuals. For example, radios provide information to people, but this information is for the benefit of the general public, or at best a local area. Thus, a need for developing a system which tailors beneficial information to specific individuals exists.
The present invention is directed to a wireless telecommunications system that uses location or position information to forward specific information to travelers. As position information of a wireless mobile unit of the traveler is received, it is compared to existing stored position information. Based upon the location of the traveler and instruction information stored in association with information identifying the wireless mobile unit, information particularly useful to the traveler is output to the wireless mobile unit.